Soaring fares and surging demand marked Indonesia's 2025 Eid travel season

Indonesia's 2025 Eid al-Fitr travel season ended with a dramatic spike in transportation demand and ticket prices, underscoring the ongoing infrastructure and capacity challenges during the annual holiday exodus.

National airline group Garuda Indonesia reported its busiest travel period as of 6 April, carrying 78,685 passengers, a 19% increase from the beginning of the return period just four days earlier. Of that total, 41,059 flew with Garuda Indonesia and 37,626 with its low-cost subsidiary, Citilink. The surge was driven by returning holidaymakers heading back to Jakarta, Surabaya, and Makassar after Eid celebrations.

Data also showed that at least 34,132 people returned to Jakarta, indicating the capital's position as the epicentre of post-holiday inbound travel.

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Across the peak return period (6–7 April), the Garuda Group moved more than 152,000 passengers, operating a combined 480 flights and maintaining a seat occupancy rate (load factor) of 88%. Despite the surge, the group achieved an on-time performance rate of 89%, a figure it expects to maintain through the end of the holiday season on 14 April.

Weeks prior, during the mudik (homecoming) phase, the airline had already recorded over 25,000 passengers leaving Jakarta on Garuda flights alone, signalling early signs of overwhelming demand that would eventually push fares higher across all modes of transport.

Meanwhile, passengers took to social media to voice frustration over exorbitant ticket prices. Some reported paying IDR 3 million (US$178) or more for domestic flights—a sharp increase from regular fares, often due to limited availability and the sudden compression of travel dates post-Ramadan.

On the rails, Kereta Api Indonesia (KAI) also experienced high traffic volumes. Earlier in the season, KAI had sold over 3.3 million tickets for the broader Eid period and added hundreds of extra trips to accommodate demand. Despite these efforts, tickets for popular routes were sold out within minutes after being made available.

Experts have long warned about the limitations of Indonesia's holiday transport system, especially during religious and national holidays. With travel demand returning to, or even surpassing, pre-pandemic levels, the pressure on operators and regulators to expand capacity and impose better price controls is mounting.

Garuda Indonesia CEO Wamildan Tsani acknowledged the challenges, stating that the airline had added extra flights on key routes such as Denpasar–Jakarta, Medan–Jakarta, Padang–Jakarta, and Batam–Jakarta. Coordination with airport authorities was also intensified to ensure smoother check-in and baggage handling processes.

According to MARKETING-INTERACTIVE's monitoring, flights out of Batam to cities such as Jakarta were fully booked across all airlines for three consecutive days as of 5 April, with remaining tickets for subsequent days priced at up to twice the normal fare.

To help ease the financial burden of holiday travel, the Indonesian government introduced a 20% discount on toll road fares across the Trans-Java and Trans-Sumatra networks during the peak return period from 8 to 10 April 2025. The policy followed a similar discount earlier in the homecoming phase, aimed at distributing traffic more evenly and reducing congestion.

KAI launched the "Silaturahmi Mudik Lebaran" programme, offering 25% discounts on train tickets for departures between 7 and 11 April 2025, across various classes (excluding luxury and specialty trains). These discounted tickets were applied to both intercity and regional routes, easing costs for thousands of travellers during the busiest days of the season.

These measures reflect the government's ongoing efforts to make Eid travel more accessible and better coordinated, amid persistent concerns about rising fares and transport bottlenecks during the annual mudik and return periods.

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